The general background of this invention is the field of driving warning and information provision systems, and adaptive cruise control (ACC).
ACC is an important function in today's automotive industry. ACC actively controls the driver's vehicle (usually referred to as “ego vehicle”) to maintain a certain distance between the driver's vehicle and other road users in front of the vehicle, such as a vehicle located in front of and in the same lane as the ego vehicle (usually referred to as the “target vehicle”). In general, each ACC system includes at least one sensor that extracts specific information about the target vehicle, such as its distance to the ego vehicle, its velocity, its acceleration, its deceleration et cetera. This information is further processed to send acceleration/deceleration requests to a unit controlling the engine of the ego vehicle, hence controlling the velocity of the ego vehicle and its distance to the target vehicle. A sensing unit of an ACC system can be a single camera, a radar system or a combination of both. With current ACC systems, the ego vehicle can be controlled until standstill behind a decelerating target vehicle. When the target vehicle resumes after standstill, some ACC systems automatically allow the ego vehicle to resume after a short period of standstill. The process of decelerating until standstill resuming thereafter is called “ACC Stop and Go”, and automatically resuming after standstill is called “ACC Auto-Go”. Before resuming, a confirmation about the clear space between the ego vehicle and target vehicle is required to avoid collisions in scenarios such as traffic jams where, during standstill, vulnerable road users might have entered the area between the ego vehicle and the target vehicle. The clearance confirmation can be for example a simple yes/no single bit or an object list indicating the presence of objects in the relevant area.
However, current ACC systems as part of overall advanced driving assist systems (ADAS) do not have a sufficiently low false negative rate (relevant objects should not be missed) whilst keeping the number of wrong detections low (low false positive rate).
There is a need to address this situation.